Poor ticket sales don’t just happen. Is it possible that the public is losing interest in “bad boy” atheism, whether it is represented by profane Darwinian bloggers or high class hatemongers (religion as a “virus of the mind,” etc.)?

Apart from professional obligations, who cares to argue with these people? The natural instinct of a sensible person is, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, suddenly recollect a subsequent engagement and, as inconspicuously as possible, find another table…

For instance, I know many Christian clergy who were point blank outraged by the “fatwa” against Salman Rushdie, representing as it does, an unhappy conjunction of mosque and state. But then we learn,

Rushdie once called religion a “poison in the blood”. He argued that respect for religion is not deserved:

“What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion’s dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them.” More.

It would be useless to dwell on the fact that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot killed hundreds of millions of people on behalf of atheism. We are unlikely to see an honest analysis of atheism-driven mass slaughters among the Reason for Hope crowd. And Australia would be a long way for most people to travel without much hope of insight.

It will be interesting to see if there is a 2019 conference and, if so, what is planned.

Worldwide interest in atheism has plummeted over the past five years. It seems people grew intrigued with it, and once they realized it was empty pseudo-intellectual fluff with no sound supporting arguments, all but the lunatics stopped caring.

‘We are unlikely to see an honest analysis of atheism-driven mass slaughters among the Reason for Hope crowd.’
What Reason for Hope crowd, Denyse?! LOL.

Seriously, I suspect that, privately, a lot of people are ‘reading the signs of the times’, qua natural and man-made disasters (radioactivity and other pollutants), in terms of apocalyptic, Christian prophecies concerning the end-times.

is often targeted at conferences, by both angry Muslims, (she’s apostate, like me), and by left wing nuts, who believe criticising Islam is the equivalent of racism. This is probably one reason she demured, religious bigotry, against atheists; I’m used to it.

Unlike what Fox, and Ken Ham suggest, there is no war on religion, atheisits on the other hand are fair game.

But atheisits generally are disinclined to group. Getting them together is like metaphorically trying to herd cats.

Axel’s lip smacking glee, at the approaching demise of humannity, and the salvation of a tiny ‘elect’, is one of the main reasons I left religion; it positivly salavates at death and destruction.

You are unable to see things in specie aeternitatis, rvb8, that’s why you are miserable, and I’m not. None of us dies – only our bodies die, and that, temporarily; a truth confirmed by some very compelling NDEs.

Moreover, I don’t believe the number of the elect is tiny, be the gate never so narrow. I believe almost all of the members of my extended family will be welcomed, despite their assortment of ostensibly atheist and agnostic, personal, religious beliefs. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got some more lip-smacking to do.

And I believe that would stretch to many other families in the UK and world-wide. The influence of nearly 2000 years of Christendom lives on in the lives of many, however unwittingly. Also, as Vatican II points out, those of other faiths who try to live devout
lives are not going to be turned away either, but welcomed in the same way. Ours is a just God.

Your God is yourself, isn’t it? You make up your own morality, and feel very self-righteous about it. You could give lessons to the Pharisees. If you ever find a church in which there are no hypocrites, be sure you don’t join it, because you will surely spoil it.

I should add, rvb8, that it is the entailment of the Apocalypse, a future in which our world, already ecologically-condemned by our own reckless, materialist hubris, will be restored, even improved, that survivors will enjoy.